


A Different Call

by thatawkwardgeekygirl



Category: Avengers movieverse, Clintasha - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:59:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatawkwardgeekygirl/pseuds/thatawkwardgeekygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clint Barton scraps the hit on a 15 year old Russian assassin, he has no idea just how much she would change his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1999

**Author's Note:**

> This is a movieverse AU, so I took some liberties with character histories and motivations. I don't read the comics, so any and all shout outs to other works or comic story lines are purely from the bits and pieces I've seen on Tumblr and decided wouldn't effect the overall plot I have here.

His first thought as he stared at her past the sight on his bow was, _She doesn’t look fifteen._

Drakov’s daughter moved with fluid grace through the press of expensively-clothed bodies and champagne flutes. Her long blonde hair was piled high off the column of her throat, and her pale shoulders gleamed against the dazzling navy silk of her dress. She laughed at something a tuxedoed man next to her said, but three buildings separated her from Barton, so he didn’t get to hear the joke.

_Sonovabitch’d better run_. He thought. The beautiful young woman – Natasha Romanova, teenage daughter of one of Russia’s most ruthless crime lords – was on the hunt, and she had her sights set on the man across from her as surely as Barton had his trained on her every move.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had tagged the girl as Drakov’s assassin only recently, but a little digging uncovered a trail of bodies stretching back nearly four years. The high profile nature of her kills, namely three high tier politicians and two rising drug king pins, had Fury assigning him the hit mere weeks after the girl had been found out.

Jesus, he had a brother her age.

Hawkeye took a breath, steadied his arm. He was here for a job: get in, make the shot, go home; but watching the beautiful girl charm her target had his throat constricting. Intel classified her as a child soldier, raised from near infancy to infiltrate, seek and destroy. Drakov had molded his own flesh and blood into a highly efficient weapon.

For the first time in nearly ten years as a sniper, he wavered.

She moved away from the window, arm-in-arm with her target.

Hawkeye cursed. He eased the tension from the bow string, jammed the arrow back into the quiver over his shoulder. His next chance would be when they were leaving the party.

“Clint, you okay?” the mild voice of Phil Coulson seemed to echo in his skull and he flinched. The world narrowed once he drew back the string, and coming out of that sharp focus could be jarring ; he’d forgotten about the com link tucked into his ear.

“Missed my chance,” he grumbled.

“You never miss anything,” the field agent said.

“I got distracted, okay?” Hawkeye hissed and slung his bow case across his shoulders.

“She’s fifteen.” Coulson’s dry voice never shifted tone, but Hawkeye bristled just the same.

“Exactly. She’s a kid. She should be home doing Algebra.”

“Well right now she’s trying to charm the pants off the man keeping the police sniffing around her father’s warehouses.” A pause. “I could bring in someone else if this is upse—”

_”No,_ ” he nearly snarled the word as he quickly descended the fire escape. He’d be damned if another agent was brought in. This was his assignment, his kill. “I can do it. I just don’t like it.”

“None of us do, Clint.” Another pause. “She looks like my niece.”

His mouth set. Do the job, make the shot, go home.

***

It didn’t take long for her to get her target nearly too drunk to stand up straight. Natasha kept the smile plastered on her face, although it was for the benefit of their audience more than for the man clinging to her arm. She doubted he could see much of anything by this point. They stumbled toward the curb and she held up her arm to hail a taxi. The sooner she got him home, the sooner she could do the job and go home. Her report would be recorded for Drakov immediately, of course, but the delivery could wait for a few hours’ rest.

She hated fancy things. Entirely too much effort put into being seen. She worked so much better in the dark.

The man drooling on her shoulder lurched sharply to one side and took her with him. She cursed, but the hard _thnk_ of something embedding in the concrete where she had stood seconds before had her instincts kicking in. She dropped the dead weight and rolled, asphalt biting into skin as she kicked to her feet and bolted.

Someone knew who she was, and they were after her.

**

“Dammit.” Her target had dragged her off target, and now she was high-tailing it down side alleys almost too quickly for him to track.

“We’re blown,” he muttered as he launched himself from his sniper’s nest and began pursuit.

“Copy that.” Coulson’s voice had a tightness to it, now. Like taut piano wire. His tone was the same as always, though: calm and even. “She’s headed towards her safe house,” – the one S.H.I.E.L.D. had thoroughly scouted before sending in the hit team – “You can pin her down there. Team 2’s got her boxed in.”

Clint grimaced even as he cut across another roof in the race to catch up with the girl. He didn’t like close kills; he worked better at a distance. If he had taken the first shot presented he could have avoided all of this. She had caught him off guard.

The other team would stay back, provide support. If anything went wrong they’d burn the whole mission and erase any trace of Barton and S.H.I.E.L.D.s presence from Russia. The Iron Curtain might’ve been down for almost a decade but an American assassin on Russian soil would not go over well. The WSC didn’t like cleanup, and Clint didn’t like the idea of his team suffering for his mistakes.

Ten minutes later, and the safe house was dark, but Coulson confirmed she was there. They had almost missed her, but the flash of blonde hair against the dark wood of an upper story window pane gave her away.

Clint moved in, carefully avoiding the alarm wires lain like spider silk across the first floor window, and eased his bow to the floor before he attempted to enter. He twisted onto his back and cautiously reached in to grab the top of the window frame, then pulled his lower half through without touching the sides of the pane. He lowered himself to the floor, crouched, and pivoted on his toes, one hand extended to grab his bow.

She was less than ten feet away and pointing a gun straight at his face.

**

She held the gun steady through sheer force of will.  
 _How did he find out?!_ her mind screamed the words over and over against as she stared the black-clad stranger down. Her face was carefully blank, while inside she wrestled with the panic.

How could he know? This place was a secret, a sanctuary. She had been so careful, and yet he had found her place. Her home. Did he know the rest of her plans?

“Don’t move,” she said, her voice dropping to the deadly timbre she used when everything human in her retreated and the killer came out.

The man remained crouched, but now his hands were open, palm out.

“Kick your bow away,” she ordered, accompanying the gesture with a toss of her head. Part of her up-do had fallen and a thick length of hair lay across her shoulder. The man complied.  
She paused. Now what? If she killed him here she would have a hell of a time hiding the body, not to mention the violation of her nest.

“Who are you?” she asked. Maybe she could get useful information before she moved him and left his body in some slum side street.

The man didn’t answer. She really hadn’t expected him to, and any name he gave her was likely an alias.

“Who sent you?” Still no answer. She cocked the gun, dipped the barrel until it pointed at his leg. “Who. Sent. You? Was it my father?” Her questions were met only with a slightly frustrated expression. “I won’t miss from this distance. A gunshot to the leg is extremely painful. I won’t ask again.”

His jaw worked, and then finally a mildly exasperated but otherwise emotionless reply. “I don’t speak Russian, sweetheart.”

**

Clint watched as the girl’s nose wrinkled in disgust. He couldn’t tell if it was because of his inability to understand her or if it was because he was American. Maybe it was both.

“She’s in the room with you?” Coulson sounded like he was commenting on the weather. Clint didn’t know how the agent was so rock steady all of the time, but it set his teeth on edge. He seemed to be the only one even mildly concerned that there was an assassin with a bead on him.

“Who. Are. You.” Her English was rough and heavily-accented. Drakov didn’t deal with many Western businesses.

“Clint Barton.”

“My father.” Her throat worked, and her eyes darted to the door, but that gun hand of hers never wavered. “He sent you?”

His eyes narrowed. She thought her own father had hired a hit on her.

“No.” he said, but now his curiosity was piqued. Her relief was palpable.

“You have come to kill me.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” Clint knew lying would’ve earned him a bullet in the gut and a slow death.

It was dark, and although his eyes were sharper than most and had adjusted to the dark, she was more shadow than person. He still felt the full force of her gaze, and what she said next nearly knocked him flat.

“Good. I want to die.”

**

Natasha was incredibly intelligent. It was part of what allowed her to be so efficient at her work. This man, Clint Barton, American killer who used a bow instead of a gun, had just offered her the perfect out. He was shocked by her words, she could see it. A morbid smile tugged at her lips but she held it in check.

“You can kill Natasha Romanova, here, tonight. Tomorrow, Natalya Romanoff will get on a plane and disappear.” She had worked on her plan for nearly two years, waiting for the moment when the child killer could die and she could be free. She even bought English language books and cassettes to boost her comprehension skills. Drakov didn’t know she knew anything but Russian and French; he wouldn’t look for her in America even if he thought she lived.

“You…want to fake your death?” He was still, uncertain. She doubted any of his marks had ever made a similar offer.

She nodded. “You will help me?”

**

“Negative. Agent Barton, finish the mission. Take her out.” The voice over the com was hard, flat, and definitely not Coulson. Since when was Fury even more than vaguely interested in the low-level missions?

He didn’t answer. The girl didn’t know about his line to the outside. He could see her better now, a flash of the full picture as a car rumbled by outside and dirty headlights rolled through the room.

She was terrified, hopeful, and so young. It wasn’t right that a girl who should’ve been in high school was asking him to help her burn every bridge she ever crossed. He felt like a vise was squeezing his insides.

“Agent Barton, do you copy? Take her out.”

He pulled the com from his ear.

“Yeah, I’ll help you.”


	2. Chapter 2

The first week they did little more than run. He wished he’d been dropped in a place where he had time to prepare beforehand, but the op had been a get-in-get-out job and long term prep hadn’t been an issue. Now he was running around half of eastern Europe trying to keep S.H.I.E.L.D. off his tail with a 15 year old killer who hadn’t spoken more than three words since he’d agreed to help her, and his only supplies were what she had stashed away and the gear strapped to his body.

It wasn’t much to go on.

She waited outside in the car –stolen from a parking lot with no cameras—while he checked into the hole-in-the-wall hostel. They’d stay the night and be gone by sunrise. He thanked the vacant-eyed clerk, pocketed the room key and jogged back out to the car.

She was slouched in the passenger seat, but she watched her surroundings carefully. Life on the run was starting to wear on her. Dark circles bagged under her eyes, and bundled in a large sweatshirt, with her hair scraped back into a ponytail and all makeup scrubbed from her face, she looked every inch a scared teenager.

“Hey.” He rapped on the driver’s side window, and her head whipped around at the noise. “We’re room 314, grab your gear.”

She slid noiselessly from the car and dragged a large blue duffel bag from the back seat. He’d abandoned his bow and quiver, since moving out in the open would demand as much discretion as could be had and archery equipment wasn’t exactly commonplace. Not that it mattered much. He preferred a bow, but it wasn’t the only thing he could shoot, and nearly every piece of Natasha’s considerable arsenal was somewhere on his person.

The room was cramped and smelled faintly of stale tobacco and industrial grade bleach. He flipped the light switch and the ceiling bulb flickered to life. The dirty yellow light didn’t even reach the corners of the room. He shut the door behind them and immediately began checking their supplies, while she moved past him, dumped the duffel on the bed, and hit the light in the tiny bathroom. He heard the sink running, but by now they had a routine. He got everything organized, she washed her face and hands, and then they disassembled, cleaned, checked and reloaded their weapons.

They were halfway through the job when the bedside phone rang. He stared at the dingy corded phone in surprise, then looked at Natasha. Her face had gone blank, and she palmed the weapon she had finished cleaning. He caught her eye, tilted his chin towards the door. She nodded, then slid off the bed and padded quickly to the exit. He grabbed the phone.

“Who is this?”

“After a week off-grid that’s how you say hi?”

Clint blew out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “Coulson. How’d you find me?”

The voice on the other end of the line turned dry. “What made you think we ever lost you? I’ve been keeping the Director off your back, but he’s still not convinced he can’t turn your street into a sheet of glass and pin it on a nameless terrorist group.”

Clint cursed. Across the room, Natasha narrowed her eyes. “Why are you calling now?”

A pause, then a sigh. “S.H.I.E.L.D.s best field agent goes rogue in the middle of an op to kidnap his mark and you’re asking me why I’m contacting you? Hill’s been breathing down my neck all week about bringing you in.” Clint could practically see the mild-mannered agent wiping his hand over his face. He quashed the guilt trying to worm into his mind; Agent Coulson could more than handle himself in any situation. Natasha Romanova wouldn’t last two seconds against a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative on her own.

“You want me to come in,” he said flatly.

“Yes.”

“What about Natasha?”

“Barton, she isn’t a normal teenager. What do you want us to do with her?”

Clint bristled at the undertone of exasperation he heard in Coulson’s voice. “Give her a fucking chance, for starters. Her dad turned her into a killing machine. She faked her death to get away from that. You heard her yourself.”

“Clint-“

“No. Put her up in some home where she can be watched and give her a shot at a normal life.”

Silence.

“You did it once,” he said harshly, “you can do it again.” He slammed the phone back into the cradle.

She hadn’t moved from her spot by the door. He sprang from the bed and began carefully layering on the weapons spread out on the sheets. “Get your stuff,” he said gruffly. “We’re not staying here.”

“It doesn’t matter if we move,” she said in her heavily accented English, although she began cleaning up the room, wiping down surfaces and putting any extra weapons back in her duffel bag. “They will know where we are.”

“Yeah, well, we won’t be here.”

***

When Natasha woke up they were still driving. The sky was gray and pink and clouded, and the highway was almost empty of cars. Barton had one hand on the wheel, and the other was propped against the windowsill. She checked the clock: 7:02. They’d been on the road for almost 14 hours, and he hadn’t slept in nearly 36.

“Pull over at the next rest stop,” she said as she stretched in her seat. “I am hungry, and you need rest.”

The look he sent her way was amused, and more than a little condescending. “I’m used to running days without sleep.”

“When you run us off the road and we are dead in a fiery crash, you will wish you had slept,” she muttered in Russian. Louder, she said, “I am still hungry. A half an hour won’t matter.”

He didn’t say anything, but several kilometers later he turned off the highway. The diner parking lot was mostly empty so early in the morning, but she still counted all the cars before she opened her door.

Barton walked slightly behind her on the way in; she could tell he scanned the parking lot and the diner’s patrons just as she did, and when she slid into the plastic booth he sat so he could see whoever came and went. She ordered coffee, and eggs and sausage. When Barton ignored the waitress she ordered potatoes and bacon, too. He might not sleep, but he had to eat sometime.

They sat in silence for a while, but Natasha was used to the quiet, and rather than try to force conversation she mentally tallied how long it would take her to kill every one of the diner’s inhabitants if she had to cut and run. The cook would take a second to get to, but other than that she figured under two minutes.

“We can’t keep going for much longer.”

The words startled her, because he was the one who insisted they run, and she knew from last night that whoever he worked for was keeping very close tabs on them even as they moved. “I know,” was all she said, and then the waitress came back with their food. She leaned back to allow the woman to slide the plates onto the table, then waited for her to move off before she turned her attention back to the man in front of her.

“Your people want you to come back.”

He nodded, then grabbed the napkin-wrapped silverware. For someone who hadn’t wanted to eat, he was eager to shovel the food into his mouth. She watched him wryly. Whoever his people were, they obviously didn’t teach their assassins manners one would expect to find in high society. She began to cut her sausage.

“Why does it bother you? You should want to go back. I will be fine on my own.” She began calculating what it would take to present herself as an adult, how much money she’d need to get a flight to America, and how she could keep ahead of a shadowy organization that wanted her dead and was calling off her only means of protection.

When she looked up he was glaring at her. “You wouldn’t last ten minutes without me,” he said, and she could have sworn he was angry. “S.H.I.E.L.D. wants you dead, and the only reason you aren’t is because I decided to change the call. I go, and six hours from now your body’s in a Dumpster.”

“He’s right, you know,” another voice said mildly.

She jerked, fingers clenching around the knife in the pocket of her hoodie, but Barton’s hand snapped out and blocked her from launching out of the booth towards the man in a suit who had somehow slipped past both of them.

“Don’t!” he hissed, and out of her peripheral she could see a few other customers staring at them. She waved his hand away and slid back down onto the vinyl seat, but she kept a tight grip on the knife. Clint glared at the man.

He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with a receding hair line and a slightly frumpy suit. He didn’t look like he’d gotten any sleep, and Natasha didn’t think she could pick him out in a crowd even if she was looking for him.

She watched him through narrow eyes as he sat down next to Clint.

He said, “Agent Barton’s proximity is the only thing keeping you alive right now, but you have certain skills that could make you valuable to our organization.” Natasha stared; every word had been in perfect Russian. She could see Clint frown out of the corner of her eye.

“What organization would that be?” she asked cautiously, slipping into her native language easily. It felt good after a week of stilted English.

“The Strategic Homeland Intelligence, Enforcement and Logistic Division. We work all over the world to ensure the population is safe.”

“Safe from what?”

The man’s mouth quirked in an amused smile. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that unless you have the proper clearance,” he said.

Clint shifted in his seat, and when she looked at him he didn’t look happy. “Try speaking something I can understand. Coulson, I don’t trust her with you. What are you saying?”

“Just laying out her options,” the man replied in English. “I convinced Hill the easiest way to get you back would be to make sure the girl’s safe. She convinced Fury, and now I’m here.” He raised an eyebrow. “Agent Hill did tell me to make sure you understand that this rebellion would be the last one, and if you think to twist the Director’s arm again you and your target will get put down, no questions.”

Natasha decided that she would do her best to avoid Agent Hill.

Coulson stood up. “We can discuss everything on the plane.”

“Not good enough,” Clint said angrily, and grabbed her wrist when she went to get out of the booth. “I want to know what S.H.I.E.L.D. plans on doing with her before I agree to go back.”

Coulson frowned, then checked his watch. Natasha thought he hadn’t planned on taking this long. “She’ll be housed in a secure location and kept under surveillance. She’ll go to school and learn to blend into American civilian life, and when she turns eighteen she’ll be free to go and do as she pleases.”

She could tell he was lying, but Clint relaxed and let go of her wrist. Coulson was getting impatient, but he was hiding it well. “As I said,” he continued, “we can discuss the details on the plane.”

She slid out from the booth. “I’m assuming I’m to say nothing of your offer,” she said in Russian. Coulson’s lips quirked in another smile, and she had her answer.

_At least I am free of my father_ , she thought, and hugged the feeling close as they left the diner.


	3. 2003

“Well that was fucked.”

Clint limped off the C-130, and winced when everything from the neck down protested the movement. The swarm of people unloading the carrier and checking equipment went by largely unnoticed; his hearing was still messed up from the percussive force of a bomb he hadn’t quite managed to outrun, and tinny ringing overlaid every noise.

Coulson waited at end of the ramp, and Clint fought not to roll his eyes. He was tired, dirty, and battered, and now Agent Emotionless would want a debrief.

“The intel sucked and it was an unmitigated disaster,” he said darkly before the other man could even open his mouth.

“Yeah,” Coulson said. “We got that. Details would be nice.”

“What? I can’t hear you.” It wasn’t quite the truth, but it’d buy him some time to de-stress before he made his report. Clint tossed his gear onto the pile of equipment to be checked, then ran a hand through his hair. Hours of sweat, dirt and blood made it stiff and unpleasant to touch. Jesus, but he could use a shower, too.

The agent’s face took on a longsuffering air. Clint made his way toward the hangar exit with Coulson trailing closely behind. At least the ringing in his ears was dying down. Another hour or so and it would probably be gone.

“You gonna follow me all the way to the showers, Phil?” he asked over his shoulder. The other man didn’t look amused. Must’ve been a rough mission for everyone if even Coulson had lost his usual serenity.

“The Director wants to know what went wrong-“

“What didn’t go wrong,” Clint muttered.

“—and you need to debrief him as leader of the mission in question.” Coulson had sped up, and now he matched Hawkeye stride-for-stride. He was like a dog with a friggin’ bone when he was annoyed.

“Look, I’ll give my report as soon as I have a shower and something to eat that isn’t an MRE. Gimme twenty minutes, okay?”

“I see you’re as stubborn as ever, Clint,” said a throaty female voice almost directly in front of him. He ground to a halt, his gaze sweeping the woman from feet to face. Black boots, black suit, gun holster at calf and thigh and hip, fingerless gloves over hands that rested in the crook of each elbow, nice rack, and eyes the color of--

He pivoted and punched Coulson square in the jaw. His hands fisted in the agent’s collar, dragged him from the ground, and slammed him against the wall.

He didn’t hear her bark out his name, barely felt her fingers dig into his shoulders. He didn’t feel when she peeled him away from Phil and heaved him against the opposite wall. He hit and bounced, but caught himself and would have launched another attack on Coulson, if she hadn’t been holding him back.

She spun low and behind him, then twisted his arm against his spine before shoving him face first against the pebbly painted wall. Industrial paint over cinder block wasn’t comfortable, and, her other arm barred across his neck, she ground his head against it mercilessly.

“Ow! Tasha! Stop!” He tried to push away, but he was injured and tired and she leaned all her weight against his twisted knee.

“Not until you calm. Down.” She was calm; perfectly serene, even. Her voice was soft and husky and so unlike the terrified and stoic child of four years ago he almost didn’t believe it was the same person speaking. He knew those eyes, though.

“I’m calm!” He didn’t sound it, and knew it. He swallowed and tried again. “I’m calm.”

She must’ve been convinced, because after a second of silence she released him and stepped back. He sagged, then turned to face them. She was helping Coulson stand up, and eyeing him with caution.  
Her hair was darker now, he noticed. Darker and streaked with the blonde he remembered.

“You said she’d have a normal life!” he snarled. He was two seconds from going after the other agent again, even with Natasha standing between them.

Coulson stood and straightened his suit, and then he was the same unflappable man as always. A bruise was already forming along his jaw and under his eye. “What I said,” he began, and his words were mushy around his busted lip, “was she’d go to school, blend into American civilian life, and when she turned eighteen she’d get to choose what she wanted to do.”

“I wanted to join S.H.I.E.L.D.” she said, crossing her arms. God, even her accent was gone. “I’m not normal. I have a specific skill set that can be used for something other than murder, and this place gives me a chance to help people.”

Somehow her words were more of a betrayal than Coulson’s. He laughed, the sound low and bitter. “Jesus, you swallowed their bull hook, line, and sinker.” He couldn’t even look at them anymore; he was all churned up inside, aching and dirty and not fit for human consumption, and then this gets thrown at him. He just…couldn’t deal right now. He turned and began to limp down the hallway.

“Where are you going?” she asked, and he would’ve sworn she almost sounded disappointed.

“Showers. I gotta debrief in ten.”

He didn’t look back.

**

Natasha frowned at his back as he hobbled off down the hallway. She didn’t really know what she had expected from a reunion, but anger and bitterness had not been it. Taking a swing at Coulson hadn't even been on the list of possible reactions.

Next to her, Phil shook his head. “I told you to wait, Nat.” He said. “That mission was a disaster; he definitely didn’t need the shock of seeing you on top of that.”

She grimaced. He was right, as usual, but that didn’t mean she liked hearing it.

“I just wanted to see him,” she said defensively. “I didn’t plan on meeting him in the hallway.”

His expression was placid, but she knew he didn’t believe her.

So what if she had gotten a little ahead of herself? She’d been keeping tabs on Clint since he stepped off the 747 that had brought her to the U.S. He’d gone with Coulson, no doubt to get the dressing down of his life, and she’d been whisked off to a training facility somewhere in Nevada.

“You might want to have medical look at that,” she said flatly, and felt some satisfaction when he touched the bruise blooming on his face and winced. “I’ve got a training session for the new transfers. Find me when you’re done cleaning up whatever mess he made this time.”


	4. Chapter 4

He didn’t see her for two days. He wasn’t sure if she was actively avoiding him, but just knowing she was there, somewhere, was slowly driving him insane.

The first couple of hours after the confrontation in the hall, he holed up in the firing range and pincushioned every target in sight. Given that the range had been built with full knowledge of his skills and senses, some of the targets were little more than faded blurs against the halogen lit background. He needed the distraction, so he waited, because he was sure she’d sniff him out, but she never showed. Clint told himself he was relieved.

He was tense and guarded in the mess hall later that evening, but he didn’t see her in the steady stream of faces coming and going, either. The food in front of him might as well have been wallpaper paste for all he tasted it.

He did see Coulson, sporting an awesome black eye and conversing quietly with Maria Hill. It wasn’t unexpected; he knew Hill had recently become the Director’s second-in-command, and Coulson was in charge of all field agents and operations, but Barton got the unsettling feeling that they were talking about him.

The covert glances they kept tossing his way, and the way they turned so he couldn’t read their lips, set his shoulders itching with suspicion. He dumped his tray and stalked out of the cafeteria.

He spent the next day training new field agents. It was Fury’s punishment for the botched mission; Clint hated dealing with the timid newbies. Most were promoted desk jockeys and hadn’t held a weapon since basic training. The highlight of his afternoon was putting down the few cocksure Special Forces types who’d made the S.H.I.E.L.D. cut. Watching their jaws go slack when he nailed a target from 85 yards out – without more than a cursory glance through the sights— improved his mood considerably.

He still had that itch, though, the one that said he was being watched. It had never been wrong before, but he couldn’t pinpoint the source and he was getting twitchy.

She caught him on the third day, and he cursed because he was alone and unarmed, in the hall between the barracks and the gym.

He shouldn’t have felt so exposed. He had a good three inches and 50 pounds on her, not to mention he was fully dressed and booted and gloved, fresh off the monotony of teaching IT nerds how to take a punch.

She was in the grey regulation pants and tee active duty agents wore in down time. Her smoky green eyes gleamed with predatory satisfaction, though, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He wasn’t used to being prey, and he didn’t like the feeling at all.

So when she breezed by him, barely flicking a look his way, the anger and frustration built over the past few days snapped free.

“Hey!” he barked, a little startled by the sharpness of his voice in the near empty hall.

She turned to stare at him, and he realized he didn’t know what to say now. Dammit, he’d been determined to ignore her.

She arched a brow. “Yes?” She asked smoothly, and he scowled at her easy tone.

“You’ve been watching me.” He accused.

Her brow furrowed, and now she faced him fully. “I have not. I haven’t been anywhere near you since the other day.”

He stalked closer. He was a grown man and he wasn’t going to be intimidated by a girl barely out of high school, even if she _had_ handed him his ass. “I know when I’m being watched.”

Her features were carefully neutral, in the way field operatives were taught, but he could see the tiny flickers of confusion at the corners of her eyes. “Well it wasn’t me. You made yourself clear; you don’t want to see me. Guess four years wasn’t long enough for you.”

Clint tensed at her words. “I wanted you away from a father you thought was trying to kill you. I wanted you to grow up in a normal home and live a normal life.”

“Well I’m not normal,” she said, her words measured and careful like she was explaining it to a child. “I killed more people than anyone should by the time I was thirteen. I can speak four languages, I know three forms of hand-to-hand combat, and I can assemble and disassemble pretty much any piece of weaponry put in front of me.” She crossed her arms. “My decision to join SHIELD didn’t have anything to do with what you wanted for me, Clint. I did it because Coulson showed me that I could do more, be more, than a college student with a sketchy past. I can help, and I’m going to. Because I want to.”

He stared at her, jaw working, trying to process what she’d said. Then he sighed, and the tension drained out of him. “You never really had a choice, did you?”

Her chin jerked up at that, and he quickly backpedaled. “I mean, before you decided to join SHIELD. Everything was done for you, or you had to follow orders.”

She didn’t answer, but her gaze had gone steely and he didn’t need the words to know he was right. She kind of creeped him out with that stare, but it was hard to stay mad at her when she was doing exactly what he was doing – his job. They were officially on the same side, now.

Eventually his brain would catch up to that fact.

“So.” He mentally fumbled for words. Damn if his rep as a smooth talker wouldn’t take a hit if any of his buddies could see him now. “Four years. You’ve, uhm.” He couldn’t say she’d turned from a pretty teen into a smoking hot woman, because that was even creepier than her stare, so he ended up just gesturing in her general direction.

Her lips curved, and that set off more bells than her anger. “Filled out?” She offered, shifting her weight onto one leg so her hip cocked to the side.

“Grown up.” He ground out.

Her expression never changed, but she was laughing at him. He knew it.

“You haven’t changed at all.” She stated. “I’ve seen the files on some of your more…” she searched for the word, “…exciting missions. I thought Fury would’ve chained you to a desk job by now.”

“Too much of an asset in the field.” Clint shrugged; he didn’t mess up often, but when he did it was pretty spectacular. He was needed, though, and that alone had saved his ass more than once when it came to answering to SHIELD. “He’s still got me on a pretty short leash, though.” And now he’d be suffering through training eggheads and self-important hotshots for the foreseeable future. “You?”

“Newly minted agent.” She smirked, self-satisfaction practically oozing from her. She should be proud; he didn’t know of any agents besides Hill who had been successfully recruited so young. “I haven’t had any outside assignments yet, but Coulson said I’ll be out in no time.” She finished nonchalantly.

He wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of her in the field.

“He’ll put you on a good team,” he hedged instead, mostly to cover up his own discomfort, which grew when she shook her head.

“I’m a solo act. Always have been.”

“Not always,” he reminded with more heat than he’d meant to use. He remembered that week on the run, and they had worked well together. Yeah, he’d done most of the heavy lifting, but she hadn’t tried to run or kill him once, and she had adapted to his rhythm quickly.

“That was a long time ago.” Her voice was flat and her eyes narrowed. Obviously she had had to fight for a solo designation. Barton wasn’t happy Coulson had given in.

“Not so long.” He pressed, and watched as her features set stubbornly.

Natasha waved him off, dismissing his concerns. “I work better by myself. I’ve trained to work better by myself.”

He put up his hands in defeat. “Okay, I believe you.” He sounded pretty convincing, to his own ears. She seemed to buy it, at least. “I, ah, gotta go. The Director has me teaching hand-to-hand all week.”

She shrugged. “I’m teaching some of those classes, too. We might see each other around.” She pivoted, began striding down the hall.

“Hey, Tasha?”

She paused and looked back at him.

“It’s…it’s good to see you. You look good.”

She smiled, a real one, and kept going.


End file.
